The experiences in World of Warcraft through the eyes of a player that can't spend 10 hours a day raiding.

Monday, September 15, 2008

WoW 3.0 = Death to my Laptop

I've known I need to replace my laptop for quite some time now. I think it's about 4 years old now. A month or so back when the green line appeared, I really started thinking about it. (The "warranty" for the green line is 3 years. I've had mine for at least that long.) I started to lean towards raiding on the desktop when we started Karazhan, and I gave up raiding on the laptop completely back when we started raiding 25-man content. On on occasion or two, I did ZA on it (due to technical difficulties with the other one), but at 2 fps, I figured I wasn't doing my best.

Now that I've been in Beta, a couple more things happened. I was playing on my desktop and I first noticed that Northrend looked very foggy, but very, very smooth (about 60 fps). At some point, something clicked and I turned up all the effects and distance. Fog was instantly pushed back to reveal some stunning backgrounds. I was awed when the Burning Crusade came out; Wrath of the Lich King will awe me again. My frame rates dropped a little bit, but things were still smooth. (I think it was about 40 fps.)

Heading on over to the laptop to relax on the couch, and there was that same fog feeling. Although this time, not quite as smooth. (I forgot to look at my fps, but probably about 25.) Wanting to experiment a bit, I put the settings all the way up. About 2 fps... not really what I would consider playable. So, I pushed them back down and explored a bit.

Not trying to give away any spoilers here, but in the new PVP zone (which was quite fun), you can mount gun turrets and vehicles. The distance you can shoot is fairly far. With the terrain distance at it's lowest, you can't see where you're shooting. I moved that slider only up, and the 10 fps was better, but still not ideal for PvP. I can only guess how bad it will be for raid encounters with 9 or 24 other people.

So... yeah. I guess the issue is now prioritizing spending. Backyard, inside painting (decorative), or new computer? Anyone want to guess my vote?

2 comments:

Elinor
said...

I noticed that certain settings in beta are much more "touchy" than others. I found that the new "shadows" setting had a very adverse effect on my frame rate. I could push all other settings up to full, but pushing up the shadow setting made it near unplayable.

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About Me

I am the Guild Leader of Primogeniture, a raiding guild on Bronzebeard. Most of us have significant others and families, so we mostly devote our night hours (and lack of sleep) to working together. I've been playing for 3 years now, and have leveled multiple toons to cap.